Covenant Presbyterian Church

Throughout history there are two, and only two, cities: the city of man and the city of God. The city of man is men and families, philosophies and institutions, which are built upon a principle of revolt against God. The city of God is the believing portion of humanity, whose sinful hearts have been subdued to teachableness by the Spirit of God. Its central earthly manifestation is the faithful Church of Jesus Christ. There is not a third city. One is either a member of the city of God or of the city of man. Halfway cities like neo-conservatism, Roman Catholicism, Liberal Protestantism, "God Rocks" Christianity, and political Libertarianism are really suburbs of the city of man. They sometimes deceive the inhabitants of the city of God by their religious jargon and amiable posturing. They are like the Gibeonites in Joshua’s day: unbelieving, deceiving and being deceived, fearing judgment. They would hide their true identity and motives, thus gaining, at least for a while, the assistance and allegiance of the city of God. They in fact hate the city of God, its gates of grace through faith alone, foundation of truth alone, and government by Christ alone. By hiding under its shadow and feigning friendship, they would enjoy at least a brief reprieve from the penetrating gaze of God and the bitter fruits of their true citizenship.
The city of man is devilish; it is the city of Satan, who works in the sons of disobedience, blinding and deluding them, and taking them captive to do his will. This city may change tactics periodically; its personnel turn-over rate is often high because its philosophy is personally destructive. It tries one philosophy after another, looking for something to escape the claims of God, the gnawing of the guilt-laden conscience, and the internally felt certainty of coming judgment. Sometimes it even borrows ideas and languages from the city of God, filling them, of course, with new and different meaning. It does this to deceive the simple-minded; it is a form of indirect warfare against the city of God. This city operates by deception because its leader is the father of lies. It is not creative; it can only mimic. It enjoys temporary success only through deception, borrowing, recasting, and facades.
Its leading deception throughout history has been the attempt to convince itself and others that it is the hope of humanity, the only city of refuge. The Tower of Babel, the ancient world empires of Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome, the medieval papacy, and now the United States have operated upon the principle that their philosophies, currencies, and political systems are the only hope of the world, and more insidiously, that there is no hope in the God of the universe and his Word. Because these entities are diverse expressions of the one city of man, it is relatively easy to identity their common purposes and operations: create a mythic history based upon the supposed superiority of their founders and values, progressively deify the institutional head (pope, king, or system), convince the hoi polloi that danger from "outsiders" is imminent while creating the delusion of their omni-benevolence, consolidate all power unto itself, deceive the populace by "circuses" and consumption, and control the flow of information. This is not conspiracy; it is a fact of history, of experience, and, more importantly, of God’s Word. The "God" of every state is the source of its law. When God’s law is rejected, man must look to himself as the source of law. Man becomes God. Lacking any credible foundation for such pretensions, deception and power are all that remain. This, again, should not surprise us. The city of man is not based upon reality but fantasy, not substance but wishful thinking, not truth but deception. It can do nothing but conspire.
God has declared war upon the city of man. He did so in the Garden of Eden. He thereafter destroyed the old world, the first expression of the city of man, by a universal Flood. When reestablishing the Church under the old covenant after the Flood, Abraham had to leave Ur, the earthly center of the city of man in the ancient world. Egypt was later destroyed to protect the city of God and fulfill his promises to the fathers. The Canaanites were destroyed at the command of God. The reason men, especially theologians, decry the Bible’s historicity with respect to these events is because they are thinking in terms of the city of man. God could not have commanded wholesale genocide, destroyed the world by a flood, or intervened to protect his city by slaying 185,000 Assyrians by the hand of his Angel. These things strike us as primitive and morally unacceptable only because we no longer appreciate God’s wrath against the city of man. Those within the Church who speak the loudest against the Bible’s testimony to these events are the most influenced by the deceptive philosophies of the city of man. They are the tares in our midst, false sons sown by the enemy while the true sons of the city of God were sleeping. Endorsing compromise theology is never a sign of health, intelligence, or broad-mindedness. It is a sign that a person, a seminary, a denomination has been overrun by the city of man.
Throughout history, the city of God has often stumbled through gullibility. It has wanted to believe the best about the city of man, that some of its citizens are in fact noble, well-intentioned, and at least closet friends of the city of God. Various attempts have been made to form alliances between the two cities; current examples are the Church’s endorsement of neo-conservatism, acceptance of hyper American nationalism by conservative Christianity, dangerous support of the Zionist goals of apostate Judaism, embracing of interfaith movements, and recasting her doctrine, worship, and piety according to the world’s standards of pragmatism (whatever works), relativism (no one knows for sure), and existentialism (whatever is meaningful to you). Yet, there have been since the coming of our Savior and establishment of his kingdom two large-scale encounters between these cities, confrontations in which the mask of deception has been removed, when both sides have operated more self-consciously and self-consistently: the Apostolic Era and the Protestant Reformation. During these conflicts, the city of man was dying in its then current expression. By God’s grace, the city that bears his name returned to "thus says the Lord" and operated in terms of faith in his Word, salvation by his grace, submission to Christ as King, and love as the fruit of faith. When the city of God warred in terms of the divinely established antithesis between the word of man and the Word of God, the city of man was exposed and overturned. Direct conflict is never a positive event for the city of man. It loses every time. Nothing can stand before the power of the unleashed, unashamedly confessed, and believingly applied Word of God. This is why the city of man must operate in terms of deception to survive. It has no other weapons than lies and misinformation.
There is some evidence that the two cities are again becoming a little more self-conscious. The city of man is becoming more desperate to suppress dissent, to gain, hold, and consolidate political power, and to deceive the simple. When it embraced secularism, post-modernity, and multiculturalism, it began a decent down a one-way, dead-end street. Its methodology is nothing now but indoctrination; there is no pretense of true education, critical thinking, and a free sharing of different and often uncomfortable ideas. Its governments are unabashedly statist. Its moral values, if they can be called that, are perhaps the clearest indication of this burnout, of the descent into the abyss of man as God. Whenever a culture makes movies about a man’s sexual love for his horse, lowers the legal consent age to twelve, and maintains that uncensored access to pornography is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, the Waterloo has been crossed. In all honesty, short of copulation in the streets, which, by the way, is a regular part of gay-pride parades, the descent cannot be much lower. The mask of self- and others-deception is slipping off. They would be as gods, determining good and evil for themselves.
At such a critical juncture, we have no cause for despair, for the city of God is beginning to respond with a greater degree of self-consciousness. We see this in the surge of home-schooling and Christian day schooling, which is a clear indication that Christian men are awakening to their God-given authority and responsibilities. We see it in the exodus of hundreds of thousands from the mainline denominations, which are little more than storefronts and propaganda centers for the city of man. We witness it in the growth of the gospel in China, many Asiatic nations, across the African continent, and wherever the city of God is being persecuted. Even in this nation more voices are raised calling for a return to an authoritative Bible, to salvation by grace alone through faith, and to living in obedience to God’s word rather than inner voices and religious fads. The issue now before us, it seems to me, is how to support the rebuilding of the city of God in our day, how to contribute toward its greater self-consciousness and, therefore, to its stability and victory, now and into the future.
We must recognize that we are not the architects of the battle plan. This role belongs exclusively to the Lord of hosts, and especially now to his enthroned Son, our Mediator, Jesus Christ. This is saying more than that God is sovereign, and we must endeavor to follow his leadership. While this is true, we must be wary of affirming God’s providence and sovereignty only to feel better about our attempts to control God. If the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches us that God is the Author and Commander in his battle between these two cities. And, whenever God’s people have faced the unbridled wrath of the city of man, God has taken matters more directly, at least to our weak vision, into his own hands. Who took care of the old world, when the city of man was at its height of power and only one family remained in the city of God? God. He destroyed the city of man with a Flood and preserved Noah. How did Israel win its first significant battle in the Promised Land? God knocked down, directly and powerfully, the walls of Jericho. How were the Assyrians defeated? By the deadly assault of the Angel of the Lord. Later, how was the city of God delivered from apostate Judaism and persecuting Rome, entities described in Scripture as a whore and a beast? By the Word of God. How was the medieval papacy finally defeated? By the erection of rival popes, taking dominion of popery by infiltration and playing the political game? No, by the Word of God.
I am neither advocating a let-go-and-let-God philosophy nor undermining personal responsibility. I am suggesting that a defining step in any successful encounter with the city of man is the recognition that this is God’s battle, that faith in his Word is what obtains the victory, and that all our maneuverings, political efforts, and the utilization of methods borrowed from the city of man are ultimately frustrating and fatal to our efforts. There is one thing God will not do in this battle. He will never grant his city a victory in which there is any doubt as to what and who obtained the victory. He would have us "stand still and see the salvation of God." We have forgotten this. We are possessed by the thought that "we must do something," forgetting that we can do nothing, that the battle does not belong to us, and that God must ultimately work to defend his honor, Son, and his city.
Now it is certain that God works through means. The aforementioned cases all demonstrate that the primary means of God’s deliverances wrought for the city of man have been relatively simple, usually non-dramatic, and always focused around faith in his Word. God has indicated by these examples, and by the direct statements of Scripture, that we have two weapons: his Word and prayer. To these we should not add political machinations, attempting to beat the bad guys at their own game and with their methods, and certainly not by compromising certain uncomfortable aspects of his Word because we deem they give unnecessary offense to the city of man. We must offend it. It is not offended when we play its game, worship like it does, or reduce the gospel to slogans and pictures. It is offended and confronted when we use the Word of God, when we demonstrate true faith by depending upon the power of our God, who has given us infallible promises, promises to defend his Church, and works daily by his power and providence to build his city and cast down the city of man.
In practice, this means that the most dangerous man in the world today is the simple, humble believer who dedicates himself and his family to living by the Word of God. Such a man is unassailable. He cannot be deceived; this effectively defeats the city of man, which can only succeed to the degree that its deceptions are embraced. He is not usually sidetracked by peripheral issues, spending hours on the internet researching secondary and tertiary matters that are far removed from the cross of Christ and its preaching, the sword of the Spirit. He teaches his family to live boldly by every word from the mouth of God. He views life not in terms of the distracted and deceptive agenda of consumption, the acquisition of goods, and offerings of entertainment. He loves God, endeavors to walk with him humbly in fear, and views every area of life through the framework provided in Scripture. He prays earnestly for God to be glorified in his life, to use him to build the city of God, and to advance the kingdom of his exalted Son. He ardently commits himself to the best local congregation in which these principles are fleshed out and practiced. He is not deceived by show time, religious platitudes, and feel-good sermonettes. He is a beautiful man, whatever the standards of the city of man may say. He is also a dangerous man, for he has seen the true nature of the battle and avails himself of the weapons that will not only effect his preservation but that will also bring about the victory of God over his enemies.
This is the man, and congregations filled with his brothers and sisters, that will see the salvation of God. In the examples mentioned above, we should pay careful attention to how God was working in his people prior to every assault upon the city of man in which he bared the arm of his power and threw down the imaginations and schemes of the wicked. While he was building the ark, Noah was purified by a century of forced isolation. Abraham and the faithful city lived as nomads rather than suffer under the destruction of the Sumerian culture or compromise with its religion. The Israelites were separated in Egypt under slavery until the iniquity of the Amorites reached its zenith, until the time arrived for reentry into the promised land. When Israel and finally Judah fell, they had been weakened by religious compromise and political alliances with ungodly nations; this is a negative vindication of the principle that before God works to deliver his people from the clutches of the city of man, he purifies his people from their own wickedness and compromise. When he chooses not to deliver but to judge them, it is because they have rebelled against the purity of religion, worship, and practice to which he lovingly invites them to return.
By his providence and according to his Word, our heavenly Father operates by the same method in our day. The Apostolic Era Church endured and overcame, as we have said so many other times, by bold proclamation of the truth and commitment to lives of holiness, covenant peculiarity. They were not perfect, but the best of them did not compromise. The emptiness of the city of man was exposed. It teetered. It fell. The Reformation Church did not build upon hubristic schemes to start new denominations, beat the popes at their own game, or establish an alternate iconography (images, pictures, etc.). Preachers and people returned to the Word of God and prayer. They were purified progressively over centuries. God worked. The anti-Christ of Roman Catholicism was exposed and its dominion broken.
The Lord of hosts is not finished with his battle. We know this because there are still nations to be discipled, men who have not confessed that Jesus Christ is Lord. The Church requires further reformation and purification. What an amazing time to be alive! We are privileged to see the city of man collapsing in our day, teetering upon the non-foundations of Enlightenment thinking, relativism, and perversity, and reaping the seeds it has been sowing for centuries. What will we contribute to the city of God? Will we join God’s battle in earnest? This we can do only by confessing his truth, worshipping as he commands, and living by his holy Word. With these, everything we do must be bathed in believing prayer, faith in his promises, and dependence upon his strength. If we do these things, we will see the city of God, Mount Zion, standing tall and beautified by the love, grace, and power of its King and Husband, Jesus Christ. This is the only city that has a future. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform his work in his time. Let us be ready, sanctified, earnest, and believing. God will work, and his work will be glorious.